Thursday, March 14, 2013
By Pawan Rana
Diesel price hike in the offing, petrol price correction possible
Diesel and petrol price in India seem to have gone berserk, out of control, on to a rampage, it seems. While the people of India and the Indian car industry could not come out of the trauma of recent one after the other oil price hike, there is another hike in the waiting. And it is not too far. Sources say that diesel price could be hiked by 50 paisa per litre from Friday. That means the declaration of a price hike could come anytime from now and it will be applicable by midnight. Meanwhile, there is a breather for the petrol car makers as petrol price could see a cut by Rs 1 per litre from Friday.
If there is price correction in petrol then it is highly possible that Maruti may revise its decision to cut production of petrol cars such as Maruti Alto 800 and Maruti Wagon R and could take back its decision to stop production of petrol cars for two days in a month. Notably, the industry is in a bad shape already and it is believed that where the proposed petrol price correction will help improve the market sentiment, the rise in diesel price will dampen diesel car sales in the country. Already the demand is slow for petrol cars and there is no scope of improvement in the demand for petrol cars due to already high prices. Whereas there is still a demand for diesel cars but that too had a blow recently due to diesel price hike and will have another back to back blow when the price of diesel gets another increase by 50 paisa per litre from Friday.
Meanwhile, there are some offers doled out from car makers that will make car sales almost shock proof. The latest one is by Tata that has launched the Tata Indica eV2 LS diesel car at a discount price of Rs 46,000. Now this model of the car is available at the same price of a petrol car. Furthermore, Chevrolet is also believed to be in the process of coming up with a low priced model of the diesel powered Chevrolet Sail UVA.
